It’s getting to be time to prune the collection. At the moment, we have 11 cars in the SCM fleet, including my daily driver Hyundai Elantra. Eight are on the button, and three are in the midst of mild mechanical refurbishments. For sheer ease of management — and perhaps to […]
Keith Martin
Keith’s Blog: The Allard Experience
Starting when I was three years old, my grandfather would perch me on the nose of his Ford 9N tractor. It was a ritual we repeated every Saturday morning at our family’s small farm in Novato, California (about 28 miles north of our home in San Francisco). My engagement with […]
Keith’s Blog: First Drive
A few months ago, my son Bradley turned 15. He passed the written test and then I signed him up for lessons for street driving from a professional. In the teacher’s Honda CR-V, he had several sessions navigating local streets, and a couple of stints on freeways. Now it was […]
Keith’s Blog: Mix Old Cars with New on Tours?
What do you think the ideal cutoff date for a vintage tour should be? Or should there be one at all? The cutoff for the SCM 1000 is 1974. We chose that year as stringent smog and safety regulations began to take effect on US cars in 1975, altering the […]
Keith’s Blog: The Sporto Gets a PPI
Over the last two weeks, I’ve begun telling the story of the newest addition to the SCM fleet. I bought a 1975 911 S Sportomatic from the Hershey swap meet corral last October. The car was represented as having 47,000 original miles. It was originally purchased from Holbert Porsche in […]
Keith’s Blog: The SCM 911 Sporto Heads West
Last week we described how we ended up buying a 1975 Porsche 911 S Sportomatic offered for sale at the Hershey Swap Meet – while sitting at our desk in Portland, Oregon. In a “Love or Hate It” ‘70s Bahama Yellow (called Desert Beige by Porsche that year) it was […]
Keith’s Blog: SCM Finds its Porsche 911 Sporto
“Good things come to those who wait.” For the past couple of years, I have been watchfully waiting for the right Porsche 911 with a Sportomatic transmission to come along. I’ve chased a couple on BaT but dropped out when the bidding passed the $70k mark. While I continue to […]
Keith’s Blog: Shall We Drive to Monterey?
It’s never too early to start planning for Monterey Car Week. For several years, we organized a casual drive from Portland down the Pacific Coast. On our last trip, our motley crew included an Autozam AZ-1, an Alfa Giulia Super and Berlina, and a Citroën DS21 Decapotable. It won’t surprise […]
Keith’s Blog: Mercedes, Jaguar or Alfa?
The SCM 1000 is less than six months away. It will be an all-inclusive 1,000-mile romp on select, challenging two-lane roads of eastern Washington. With a hub in Spokane, in the heart of the restaurant district, the route will take us to the Grand Coulee Dam, rustic Lewiston, ID, and […]
Keith’s Blog: My Giulietta Sprint Speciale on BaT
SCM advertiser Fantasy Junction is selling a Sprint Speciale I recently owned and restored on Bring a Trailer. You will find many pictures and comments with the listing. Here are a few of my own thoughts (which I posted): I was the previous owner of this car and oversaw the […]